118 national geographic • may 2014
nearby houseboat where they live), cell phones,
old coins, crucifixes, guns, and once, a museum-
grade Roman clasp.
By the Pont des Arts, where lovers affix brass
locks inscribed with their names (“Steve + Linda
Pour la Vie”), they retrieve keys tossed in the wa-
ter by couples hoping to affirm the eternal nature
of their padlocked love. One bridge upriver, at the
Pont Neuf, near the Palace of Justice law courts
where divorces are decreed, they find wedding
bands, discarded when eternal love turns out
to be ephemeral.
As the central artery of Paris, the Seine natu-
rally accrues the detritus of human civilization
and relationships. Through centuries it has
served as highway, moat, water tap, sewer, and
washtub. Its scimitar arc slices the city, dividing
it into Left and Right Banks. Historically, Left
was bohemian, Right, aristocratic, but distinc-
tions have blurred over time.
On the Île de la Cité itself, in front of the
Gothic tracery of stone that is the Cathedral
of Notre Dame, is a bronze compass rose set
into paving stones. From here—point zéro—all
distances from Paris are measured. The Seine
centers Paris; it is its liquid heart. “For Parisians
the Seine is a compass, a way to know where
you are,” says Marina Ferretti, an art historian
and curator.
It is also, as the French say, fluide, a word
with philosophical implications. Surrender to
impermanence and flux, it whispers. Nothing
stays the same. No use commanding the Seine
to sit still. A river stilled is no longer a river.
It changes with the time of day and season. Its
currents carry the jetsam and flotsam of life and
death—lost plastic toys, escaped balloons, ciga-
rette butts (Gauloises, naturally), empty wine
bottles, sometimes even a corpse—as they swirl,
churn, flood, and flow past the monumental
architecture of Paris. You cannot step into the
same river twice, Heracleitus tells us. C’est fluide.
The Impressionists distilled its light into
quicksilver. Claude Monet kept a floating studio
Most every morning at nine, the emergency
responders assigned to the Seine pull on their wet suits and
swim around the Île de la Cité. In the course of their circuit
around this teardrop-shaped island in the middle of the river
in the middle of Paris, the firemen-divers scour the bottom,
retrieving bikes, cutlery (which they clean and use in the
By Cathy NewmaN
PhotograPhs By william alBert allard
Cathy Newman dreams of owning a pied-à -terre
on the Left Bank. This story marks William Albert
Allard’s 50th year as a contributor to the magazine.